Sandbar, a startup by former Meta employees Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, attracted much attention last year when it showed off its note-taking wearable, the Stream ring. The company has now raised $23 million in a Series A funding round led by Adjacent and Kindred Ventures.
The company’s smart ring is focused on note-taking, similar to products by Plaud or Omi, and not health-tracking like…
AMI Labs, the new venture co-founded by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun after he left Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. AMI is working on world models, or AI that learns from reality, not just from language.
This category has fewer players…
Anthropic has made good on its promise to challenge the Department of Defense (DOD) in court after the agency labeled it a supply-chain risk late last week.
The Claude maker filed two complaints against the DOD on Monday in California and Washington, D.C., after a weeks-long…
German robotics startup Neura Robotics has inked a partnership with semiconductor giant Qualcomm to build the next generation of robots and physical AI. The deal is the latest coupling in the emerging physical AI industry between robotics startups and larger tech hardware and software companies.
While no specific products were mentioned in the Monday announcements, the companies will work…
Sandberg, Clegg join Nscale board as this ‘Stargate Norway’ startup hits $14.6B valuation
March 10, 2026
Amid growing demand for data centers that can deliver AI compute at scale, Nvidia-backed British AI infrastructure company Nscale is now valued at $14.6 billion. This makes it one of Europe’s latest decacorns alongside Helsing and Mistral AI.
Nscale has bet on vertical…
Microsoft, Google, Amazon say Anthropic Claude remains available to non-defense customers
March 9, 2026
Enterprises and startups that use Anthropic Claude through Microsoft and Google products need not fear that the model will be ripped from their reach, Microsoft and Google confirmed to TechCrunch. AWS customers and partners can also reportedly continue to use Claude for…
Claude’s daily active users are on the rise on mobile devices, as are its new app installs, following the company’s fallout with the Pentagon. After Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to allow the government to use its AI systems for mass surveillance of Americans or to power fully autonomous weapons, the AI model provider behind Claude was marked as a supply-chain risk.
However…
City Detect, a company that uses vision AI to help local governments monitor the health of buildings and neighborhoods, announced on Friday a $13 million Series A round led by Prudence Venture Capital.
The startup launched in 2021, and Gavin Baum-Blake, the remaining…
Meta sued over AI smart glasses’ privacy concerns, after workers reviewed nudity, sex, and other footage
March 6, 2026
Meta is facing a new lawsuit over its AI smart glasses and their lack of privacy, after an investigation by Swedish newspapers found that workers at a Kenya-based subcontractor are reviewing footage from customers’ glasses, which included sensitive content, like…
This isn’t David Park’s first rodeo. The veteran founder and TechCrunch Startup Battlefield alumnus has certainly been battle-tested in the enterprise arena. On this episode of Build Mode, Park joins Isabelle Johannessen to discuss how he and his team are intentionally iterating, fundraising, and scaling Narada. This enterprise AI solution uses large action models to automate complex…
